


Perfect

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-07 01:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11048493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: He was sofuckingperfect.And Noctis was so fuckingnot.





	Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aithilin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/gifts), [CkyKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/gifts).



“You okay over there?”

Noctis bit his lip to restrain the emotional tirade straining to spill past because _no_ , everything was absolutely _not_ fine, and he didn’t know _why_.

It was as perfect of a first date as he was ever going to have, he was sure of it. In no small part due to the fact that he didn’t want another first after this. Because he wanted Nyx Ulric forever.

He was so _fucking_ perfect.

And Noctis was so fucking _not_.

Case in point: How desperate must he be for human affection if he was already in love with the guy after one date and a few weeks of flirting? And how unattractive must that desperation look to the least neurotic man Noctis had ever met?

Noctis knew he wasn’t hiding it well – as evidenced by Nyx’s gentle probing. He was all hunched shoulders and hands in his pockets; down-turned eyes and short, jerky steps. There never seemed to be enough space to walk. He swerved away from passers-by, brushed his shoulder against Nyx’s, felt every cell in his body electrify, and tottered, awkwardly, away from him again.

He hated this. He hated that he couldn’t turn off the thoughts for just one, perfect night. And, _oh gods_ , had it been perfect. The unattainable ideal made true. He’d only watched dates like these happen in the movies. Thought that they only existed in the cheesy-romantic, TV-produced scripts.

A dressed-down dinner at a casual, but classy little place Nyx found halfway between the two districts dividing their apartments. A varied, fairly inexpensive menu that included dishes from multiple regions – including the ones beyond Lucis. There was something for every taste, and tables open to the people that matched. Noctis recognized the fair coloring of Accordan dissenters, the sun-kissed skin of visiting Leidens, the anemic-looking pale of the Insomnia-born, and the darker palette of Galahdian immigrants.

While a busy place, the volume of the patrons was maintained at an amiable lull of indistinct chatter. Each voice blended into the next to create a quiet cloud of contentment overhead, strung between the decorative lights that spider webbed between the overhangs. They got an outdoor table, tucked away in the corner of the restaurant’s patio. A rustic venue; sandstone walls decorated with the twisting limbs of potted vines, dark oak tables and chairs, subdued yellow lights behind the bar, making the rainbow bottles of liquor twinkle like holiday lights.

Noctis couldn’t remember the last time he’d been wined and dined like this. Not without there being an ulterior motive to it – being cowed into a potential political proposal, foreign advisors trying to sneak information he didn’t have by prying him with vintage reds.

He’d forgotten what it was like to just… talk. To be asked about what he liked rather than who he knew. To be the target of hilariously cliché pick-up lines instead of malevolent innuendos. To be the focus of such an easy smile and a warm, blue stare.

 _It was too much_ , an intrusive, terrified voice whispered in the back of his head towards the end of dinner. It effectively killed the laughter that had been tentatively coaxing itself from his chest after every one of Nyx’s lines.

It was all too good. _He_ was too good. He was too easy to make laugh, too easy to smile when Noctis tripped over his words, too decent not to stare at the blush on his face when the wine and the dumb jokes and the desire all became too overwhelming to keep down.

He couldn’t keep this. Not something this perfect. He was too messy for perfect things. His fingers were ink-and-blood-stained from words he could never write down and wounds he’d failed to close by himself because no one else could bandage them up. He smeared glass with black-red stains, blurred the pristine lines of pretty things until they were as lost to himself as he was.

 _He couldn’t have this_ , he thought, as they left the restaurant. But he wanted it. He wanted it _so bad_. Nyx was so… _nice_. So _real_. So unique from anyone he’d tried and failed at dating before. He didn’t scoff at him, he didn’t crowd him, and he didn’t lose his patience with him. He laughed when he didn’t have to, and it never felt forced. And he looked _into_ him rather than right through him. He met his eyes and Noctis could see him listening to every word he said.

He wanted to keep him if he would have him. And he could hear how crazy and clingy that sounded for a first date. He knew he was romanticizing him, idealizing him back into that TV-movie script, and probably seeing things he only wanted to see.

But then, Nyx did things so simple and god damn chivalrous, like slip his coat over his shoulders, that Noctis wanted to forget he had knees, collapse into his chest, maybe kiss him a little, maybe kiss him _a lot_ , maybe tell him that he made this night one of the nicest he’d had in a while, and maybe let him take him someplace quiet to do a little more than kiss.

“Take my jacket, it’s cold outside,” Nyx said to the wide-eyed surprise on his face.

But it _wasn’t_ cold outside. Noctis had just been shivering because he was so stupid and scared that it made him cold on the inside. And Nyx was too kind not to accommodate him, even when the whole rest of the street, with its people passing in T-shirts and sandals, proved that he was the wreck.

It was all he could do just to hold onto the ends of the jacket and not wrap himself up in it like a blanket. It was so _warm_. And it smelled like him. Like sandalwood and smoke. Noctis wanted to burrow himself inside of it and never give it back.

The warmth helped to thaw his frigid nerves, just a little bit, while they walked. He wasn’t even sure where they were going, but he was sure that Nyx had mentioned it at some point. He was just too distracted with how perfectly white his teeth were when they flashed at him to hear.

The dazzle of his smile was refracted in the twinkling water Nyx led him to. It was in the middle of a cozy little park, just as tucked away as the restaurant had been. Noctis was quickly learning that Nyx was an expert at sniffing out the hidden treasures of Insomnia’s lower districts. He looked down the alleys most people were too nervous to venture into. And his bravery was rewarded with gems like these.

“Thought you might appreciate it,” Nyx said, dropping down on the crest of the hill over-looking the lake. “Lot of fishermen come out here on the weekends.”

Noctis slowly lowered himself to sit next to him, recalling the ten-minute tangent he’d gone on about his favorite hobby. And marveling again at how Nyx had listened along attentively, nodding along to each anecdote, smiling here and there at his bursts of enthusiasm. He really did listen. Most people tuned him out when he got on that topic. He’d learned to avoid it altogether in most circles that weren’t his friends (and even then, he knew he could exhaust them with it, too.)

“Is fishing a big thing in Galahd?” Noctis asked to fill the quiet, staring out at the blue-white glint of the Wall reflecting on the water.

“You better believe it,” Nyx chuckled. “Big part of the island life. You would have fit right in there.”

Noctis bit his lip and cringed back into the warmth of Nyx’s jacket. He didn’t miss the past-tense referral of Nyx’s homeland. And couldn’t blot out that annoying voice in his head that was determined to cut as wide a rift between them as possible.

“You sure you’re okay? That seafood disagreeing with you? Because you’ve looked like you’re going to be sick ever since we left the restaurant.”

Noctis squeezed his eyes shut and bit down so hard on the inside of his lip that he thought he tasted blood. He didn’t know how to make it any less obvious. He didn’t know how to shut off that niggling little voice and just enjoy the moment. The reflection of the lake, the quiet lap of it just a roll down the hill, the comfort of the dark night, and the cozy scent of Nyx in the fabric of his jacket.

“No, no, it’s not that,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, it’s… stupid shit. Stuff. I’m just…”

He chanced a glance at him when he felt that open stare on him. He bit down again – hard – when he felt the vibrations of a noise threatening to race out of his lungs at the look of those eyes. So intense and yet so _kind_. Sympathetic to what a mess he was making of things.

“I’ve had a really great time tonight,” he submitted to saying. “You’re really, _really_ nice. I kind of thought that a glaive from Galahd wouldn’t exactly be my biggest fan.”

Nyx snorted in amusement, something knowing in the glint of his silver-blue stare. Like he’d heard that one before. But there was no hostility to it. Nothing to suggest that Noctis’s fears were true.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” Noctis confessed, knotting his fingers through the grass underneath him. “Gone on an actual date. One that wasn’t supervised,” he added with a scoff. “And it’s been really good, you’re really good, and I’m just, nervous, I guess, about making it not good. Or saying something stupid that might ruin my chances of getting a second date. Kind of like what’s happening right now.”

Noctis clamped his jaw shut and whined to himself, face heating up as Nyx laughed, softly, beside him. He shouldn’t be allowed to talk. The gods should have taken his voice away before he could use it to make everything so awkward. He’d been fine before. He’d been fine through the whole dinner. Why couldn’t he just keep being fine up until the end? Why did he always crash and burn right when it counted?

“Hey,” Nyx said, bumping his shoulder into Noct’s and making him want to scream because _yes, please, more of that._ “You’re pretty nice, too. And really funny. And I’d say your chances of getting a second date are pretty good.”

His heart was ramming so hard into his chest that he was afraid it would burst out and roll down the hill to drown in the lake. There could be no way that this was real. _No one_ was that perfect, that kind, that forgiving. He was a prince and he was supposed to have it all together. He knew that he came with certain expectations for people. The stuttering, awkward train-wreck was not one of those expectations. He couldn’t understand how Nyx could pretend that it wasn’t.

Then, Nyx touched his face. A light little tug on his chin between thumb and forefinger. And he wanted to scream for him to never take his hands off of him. He didn’t know if that was just because Nyx was _Nyx_ , and the most carnal parts of his brain that he’d tried to suppress for years wanted him so badly. Or if it was a result of having not been touched like that in just as many years. Of not having someone be so close as this in so long. In not feeling the gentle brush of fingers on his face, asking without saying a word for something that he was desperate to give and frightened beyond reason to share.

“Can I kiss you?” Nyx asked, the low gravel of his voice tugging at the knots in Noctis’s chest.

The nod was more automatic than he should have let it be. He should have held back, kept the hunger at bay, but Nyx was _right there_. And his skin smelled like his jacket, and his eyes were so still and soft, and Noctis wanted to give him everything he would ever ask of him while knowing how ridiculous it would be to throw himself at him.

But then, Nyx kissed him, and that voice that he’d fought with for as long as he could remember finally quieted. His thoughts halted, then narrowed, then softened at the edges. His heartbeat didn’t slow, but it evened in its pace. Matched the steady thump he could just barely feel through the careful caress of Nyx’s lips on his.

He’d craved this. He hadn’t known how badly until Nyx had asked him out in the first place. He craved this kind of closeness, this softness, these gentle touches. A hand resting on his waist, cupping around his neck. Places reserved for lovers he didn’t think he should have, but wanted so much anyway. He wanted to be held like this. Wanted to be kissed like _that_. He just… _wanted_. This one thing that the Crown had convinced him he could never have.

He pushed forward, laid his arms against Nyx’s chest, shifted a little bit closer until his thigh was bumping into his. He thought about getting closer. Of hooking his arms around his neck and then his legs around his hips. But the sense that wasn’t his cruelest restraint gently chided him not to. He breathed into the taste of this mouth he’d watched smile at him all night. He let his hand wander up his chest and thumbed through the bristles along his jaw. He was surrounded by the heat of him; the jacket at his back and Nyx at his front; trapped on all sides by him and never wanting to escape if Nyx asked to keep him there.

Nyx hummed and the sound rolled right down Noct’s spine. He shuddered and cursed himself that the motion broke his mouth away from his. Nyx smiled between them and Noctis felt his own pulse straining in his neck.

“Perfect kiss to end a perfect night,” Nyx murmured.

“I don’t want it to end,” Noctis sighed before the walls could return in his mind and command him not to voice his desires.

Nyx’s thumb moved in thoughtful circles against his neck and Noctis had to swallow the sound it called forth. Gods, he wanted those hands on him everywhere. Calloused fingertips brushing down his chest, gripping through his hair, making him beg. His brain was already begging, and for a horrified moment, as he caught Nyx’s smile, he was afraid that he’d begged for more out loud.

“Second date, then,” he reminded him. “Tonight gets to be a comma, not a period.”

Noctis laughed at that, the nerves tumbling out of him as he did. He took a breath and steadied himself on that steadfast stare. _You can push_ , the kinder part of him said. _Not quite so hard, though._

“Okay. Comma it is, then.”


End file.
